The following were the five most popular t-shirt designs we sold on Skreened during the month of May 2010:

Each of these five most popular designs has to do with the issue of immigration. Interestingly, none has to do with the issue of oil spills, another contender in the public imagination for salience. I wonder why this difference emerged. Is there a difference in how people feel about the issue as relevant for activism?

While oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, people are mobilizing to demand that the Obama administration stops rubbing its hands while BP “takes care” of events and starts getting more active in protecting the Gulf.

San Francisco, CA: May 25 at 4:00 pm
Berkeley, CA: May 27 at 11:30 am
New Orleans, LA: May 30 at 1 pm

Protests regarding SB 1070, the search, seizure and detention without probable cause law new to Arizona, are also continuing:

Seattle, WA: May 28 at 2 pm
Fresno, CA: May 28 at 6 pm
Phoenix, AZ: May 29 at 8 am

If you know of more events, share the word.

In his libertarian appeal to Tea Party, Senate candidate Rand Paul likes to talk about his support for the Constitution. He writes, “The Federal Government must return to its constitutionally enumerated powers and restore our inalienable rights. America can prosper, preserve personal liberty, and repel national security threats without intruding into the personal lives of its citizens.”

Yet, as much as Paul likes to pose as pro-Constitution, he also is savvy enough to know that he’s got to please the right wing voters of Kentucky in order to win the election. So, when it comes to the details of supporting personal liberty, Paul is willing to throw the Constitution under the bus when it’s convenient.

On the issue of immigration, Constitutional liberty isn’t convenient to the Rand Paul campaign. The facts are mighty pesky too.

The fact is that the rate of people illegally crossing the border into the United States from Mexico appears to have dramatically decreased in recent years, to about a third of what it was ten years ago. Rand Paul’s campaign ignores that fact, and supports the standard Republican concept that illegal crossings are increasing across a loose border. “Millions crossing our border without our knowledge constitutes a clear threat to our nation’s security,” Paul writes.

What does Paul intend to do about that clear, diminishing threat? He wants to force people to speak English, making it the official language of the United States. When Paul said that he didn’t want government to exceed its constitutional authority, he apparently meant to exempt the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. If we can’t choose which language to speak, the government is telling us that only a limited range of words and syntax are allowed. That’s not free speech.

Rand Paul doesn’t talk about Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, which directs law enforcement officials to use the color of citizens’ skin as a criterion for suspicion of criminal activity. He does, however, suggest a position of support, saying that “I support local solutions to illegal immigration.”

The passage of SB 1070 in Arizona will certainly have a strong impact within the state of Arizona. When the law goes into effect in less than three months, it will force police officers to stop and search citizens who look like illegal aliens to them, without probable cause to believe that they are actually illegal aliens. U.S. citizens will be put in detention if they don’t have identity papers on them.

Does the passage of SB 1070, certainly a victory for Arizona’s right wing, signal the onset of victories for right wing Americans on a national level? Does the momentum theory of politics apply, in which the passage of policy in one venue leads to the promotion of similar policy elsewhere?

If there was any Big Mo for right-wing America after the passage of SB 1070, we’d see some kind of progress in right-wing legislation on immigration currently under consideration of Congress. A perennial cause of right-wing legislators on Capitol Hill has been the denial of citizenship to babies born right here in America. Two bills to revoke American-born babies’ citizenship are H.R. 126 and H.R. 1868.

The way that U.S. citizenship works is pretty simple when you get down to it: if you are born in this country, you are a citizen. That’s the standard set out in the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. But for some years now, right-wing members of the House of Representatives have been unhappy with the Constitution. They would either like to change it to deny the presumption of citizenship rights, or they would like to pass a law that simply ignores the 14th Amendment.

H.R. 1868 is a bill designed to remove the guarantee that what makes you an American is being born in the USA. This bill, inappropriately named the Birthright Citizenship Act, actually takes away birthright citizenship from people born in the USA if their parents aren’t permanent residents or citizens. If passed into law, H.R. 1868 would apply the old German Heimatland model of citizenship rights guaranteed by proper bloodline rather than by place of birth, a model in which generations of people of Turkish descent, all born in Germany and living in Germany all their lives, were denied German citizenship. Germany abandoned this system in the 1990s, but the American right wing is eager to put America on this path, with 92 members of the House indicating their formal support through cosponsorship.

H.R. 126, even more extreme than H.R. 1868, is a bill designed to work in concert with a constitutional amendment to remove the guarantee that what makes you an American is being born in the USA. Once that is accomplished, the supporters of H.R. 126 would implement a plan according to which you’ll have to be born to an American resident mother or citizen mother. You read that right: “mother.” Not father. Even if you are born in the USA, the son or daughter of a male American citizen, H.R. 126 would still strip you of your citizenship.

These draconian immigration measures may warm the cockles of right-wing hearts across America. But the bills have not gained discernable momentum from the high-profile passage of SB 1070 in Arizona. Neither bill has made any procedural step forward toward consideration by the House since SB 1070 became law. H.R. 1868 has gained no new cosponsors at all, and H.R. 126 has gained just one new cosponsor — Rep. John Duncan of Tennessee. This takes the number of cosponsors of the bill from 0 to 1, which is an infinite increase proportionately but a miniscule increase in absolute terms. Duncan has long held strong anti-immigrant views.

What this lack of momentum in Congress signifies is that while the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona has grabbed the attention of Americans on both sides of the immigration policy divide, its passage and the discussion of its ramifications do not seem to have changed minds.

The Arizona protests that began in earnest during the last week of April show no sign of abating in the first week of May. April saw the passage of SB 1070, a new state law that violates the 4th Amendment by requiring police to search and seize citizens’ and legal residents’ papers without probable cause, and violates the 14th Amendment by explicitly permitting people to be targeted for search on the basis of skin color, so long as another stereotypic quality (such as language or perceived national origin) also characterizes an individual (see SB 1070 bill page 1, lines 20-34). If U.S. citizens and legal residents targeted for the search and seizure of their papers don’t happen to have proof of their American citizenship or legal residency on them, they are subject to detention until they can establish such proof.

People in Arizona — a great many of whom have brown skin, speak Spanish, and are often asked whether they were born in Mexico — are understandably upset at this prospect. And so protests against SB 1070 continue tomorrow, May 5. People will be meeting at 12 Noon at the University of Arizona in Tucson outside the Old Main building to air their grievances against this new law. At 6 pm, the people of Phoenix will gather at the Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church at 6 pm for a rally, followed by a march against SB 1070 at 8 pm.

Last week, in case you hadn’t heard, Arizona passed a law subjecting law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents to warrantless search and detention without probable cause.

You read that right. Don’t let someone limit discussion of this new law, SB 1070, to illegal immigration and their illegal illegality, because the truth is that the law does not only apply to people who break the law. Indeed, the central problem is that this Arizona law violates the greater constitutional law in order to accost people, search them and detain them without probable cause to believe they have done a single thing wrong. Under the United States Constitution, the supreme law of the land, a person cannot be searched and have their papers and effects seized except on the basis of “probable cause,” actual evidence indicating that this person has broken the law. It’s spelled out in the 4th Amendment.

Instead of following the requirements of the constitution and demanding probable cause before action, Arizona law SB 1070 allows — no, requires — a police officer to demand that any old person walking down the street produce documentation to prove they aren’t an illegal immigrant, if the police officer so much as suspects the person might be an illegal immigrant. Then, if that person doesn’t have proof of their citizenship or legal immigration status on them, the police officer is to send the person off to detention until they can prove their legal status. SB 1070 actually allows anyone in Arizona (think Minutemen) to bring a lawsuit and inflict significant financial penalties on any city or town in Arizona for not pursuing such action to the fullest extent possible.

Your papers, please! Papiere, bitte! Search and detention on mere suspicion, not on the basis of probable cause. A free state turned into a police state. Is this the America you believe in?

Millions of Americans are voicing their firm “NO!” Yesterday, I noted that more than 70 cities across the nation had organized protests for this Saturday, May 1 in favor of saner, more humane, more constitutional immigration, search and detention policy. Well, in just 24 hours that number has grown even larger. As of this hour, the American cities and towns hosting protest marches number nearly 100. In addition to the cities I listed yesterday, these communities have added their own protests over the last day:

Flagstaff, AZ
Fresno, CA
Stockton, CA
Watsonville, CA
Bloomington, IL
Denison, IA
Wichita, KS
New Orleans, LA
Lincoln, NE
Las Vegas, NV
Southampton, NY
Asheville, NC
Greensboro, NC
Kernersville, NC
Alexandria, VA

Click here for the full list.

You don’t have to be or even know an illegal immigrant to have this issue affect you. All you need to do is look at yourself in the mirror before you step out on the street and ask yourself, “Do I look like an illegal immigrant today?”

Last week, we saw passage of a bill requiring state and local police across Arizona to demand immigration papers from people they come across who somehow look like an illegal immigrant to them, and to detain such people until they can prove they are American citizens or legal residents. Republican congressman Brian Bilbray says that should be easy: not only do illegal immigrants have brown skin, you see, but they also all wear the same clothes. Republican congressional candidate Pat Bertroche is campaigning on the notion of literally treating illegal immigrants like dogs:

I actually support micro-chipping them. I can micro-chip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I micro-chip an illegal?

Against this backdrop of developments, Reform Immigration for America is organizing a wave of protest marches for Saturday, May 1 in cities and towns across the country. These marches are to oppose draconian Arizona-style laws that violate the rights of American-born and immigrant people alike and to promote immigration reform that integrates families, creates a viable legal visa alternative to illegal crossing and preserves Americans’ constitutional rights.

The list of May 1 marches is growing by the hour, already stretching from Maine to California, from Alaska to Florida. Here’s the current, impressively varied list of march locations (see here for updates):

Anchorage, AK
Little Rock, AR
Phoenix, AZ
Tucson, AZ (unaffiliated; see below)
Bakersfield, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Napa, CA
Oakland, CA
Oxnard, CA
Sacramento, CA
Salinas, CA
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
Santa Rosa, CA
San Rafael, CA
San Bernadino, CA
Terra Bella, CA
Wasco, CA
New Haven, CT
Boulder, CO
Denver, CO
Glenwood Springs, CO
Montrose, CO
Longmont, CO
Yuma, CO
Washington D.C.
Miami, FL
Atlanta, GA
Palatine, IL
Naperville, IL
Chicago, IL
Des Moines, IA
Boston, MA
Portland, ME
Ann Arbor, MI
Detroit, MI
Minneapolis, MN
St Louis, MO
Reno, NV
Freehold NJ
Hightstown, NJ
Morristown, NJ
Manchester, NH
Albany, NY
Albion, NY
Buffalo, NY
Ithaca, NY
Long Island, NY
Manhattan, NY
Peekskill, NY
Queens, NY
Charlotte, NC
Durham, NC
Santa Fe, NM
Cleveland, OH
Columbus, OH
Painesville, OH
Portland, OR
Salem, Oregon
Kennet Square, PA
Philadelphia, PA
Providence, RI
Memphis, TN
Shelbyville, TN
Austin, TX
Brownsville, TX
Dallas, TX
El Paso, TX
Houston, TX
McAllen, TX
Newport News, VA
Centralia, WA
Mount Vernon, WA
Tri-Cities, WA
Seattle, WA
Tacoma, WA
Vancouver, WA
Walla Walla, WA
Wenatchee, WA
Yakima, WA
Milwaukee, WI

Chances are good that there’s an event somewhere near where you live. If you noodle around the ‘net, you may find even more protests than this, since these are only events that have affiliated themselves with the Reform Immigration for America organization. For instance, Tucson Arizona was a notable absence from this list. Tucson’s a very activist-friendly city and being just 45 minutes north of the border has had strong protest activity on immigration issues for decades. Checking in, I see that the independently inclined Coalicion de Derechos Humanos is holding a protest march to Armory Park in Tucson the morning of May 1.

Protests against Arizona’s new law, SB 1070, are spreading, and it’s not just grassroots citizens who are in the opposition. California legislators are calling for their state government to cease all business with organizations within the state of Arizona. Mexico has issued a travel advisory against going to Arizona.

The law requires law enforcement to engage in racial profiling, stopping people simply because they’re judged to look like illegal immigrants. If people don’t have proof of citizenship on them, they are to be taken to detention centers.

U.S. Representative Joe Baca gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in which he said, “I call on all of us to consider a national boycott of all industries in Arizona and to a wear a band on our sleeves to protest against this unjust law and to show that this is not the American way. We must not tolerate unjust laws inspired by racism and hate.”

An armband sounds like an interesting idea, but Congressman Baca’s office isn’t offering clear guidance on what kind of armband. There are rumblings about a brown armband, but no coordination that I can see on such an action yet.

In absence of a standard armband protest against SB 1070, we’re offering the following protest t-shirts at our Arizona politics shop on Skreened. These offer explicit messages of opposition to Arizona’s unjust legislation.

If Arizona declares that all people who look like they might be illegal immigrants must be sent to detention camps, then we can all wear tshirts declaring that we’re illegal immigrants – or that we look like them. Are they going to arrest us all?

As with all our Skreened sales, the shirts are made in the USA, not exploiting overseas sweatshop labor. One dollar from every sale goes to a Kiva microloan to help bottom-up economic development in foreign countries, and another dollar from each sale is donated to progressive political causes.

Jim has correctly pointed out that the only politicians who voted for SB 1070, the Arizona law that requires law enforcement officers to arrest people for appearing foreign while not carrying proof of citizenship, were Republicans. However, that doesn’t mean that Democratic politicians from Arizona are all working to oppose the law.

Arizona’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t have an opportunity to vote for or against SB 1070, of course. It’s a state law. However, they do have a prominent platform from which to oppose the law, if they should choose to do so.

There are five Democrats from Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives. Out of these five, only two have chosen to place statements against SB 1070 on their congressional web sites. Raul Grijalva has written a letter to President Obama, stating, “Mr. President, I urge you to implement your existing authority to limit your cooperation with Arizona officials in their enforcement of SB 1070. Swift action on your part will send a clear message that the Federal government will not support Arizona’s unconstitutional and discriminatory actions.” Ed Pastor has posted a statement against SB 1070 as well: “It’s embarrassing to continue to see our state legislature churn out these hate-filled measures that offer no real solutions and violate our civil rights.”

Arizona’s other congressional Democrats, Gabrielle Giffords, Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell, have all said nothing. Why?

The difference may have to do with political ideology. In the congressional legislative scorecards compiled by That’s My Congress, we can see that Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva are somewhat progressive, with scores of 54 and 71 on a scale that could reach 100.

Gabrielle Giffords only has a score of 28. Harry Mitchell only reaches 14. Ann Kirkpatrick has a score of zero. Giffords and Mitchell are members of the right wing Blue Dog Coalition of congressional Democrats.

The problem with these three Democrats isn’t limited to the racial profiling of SB 1070. It seems that their silent acquiescence to SB 1070 comes as a consequence of their general acceptance of an oppressive right wing vision for America.

Over the past few days, I’ve been looking at “Tea Party” organizations across America and finding (link | link | link | link) two components of the movement sitting so oddly side by side. On the one hand, Tea Party leaders cry loudly about their commitment to the Constitution. On the other hand, Tea Party organizations endorse and contribute overwhelmingly to Republicans — Republicans who have acted nationally in the U.S. Congress to gut the 1st Amendment, the 4th Amendment, the 6th Amendment, the 8th Amendment and the 14th Amendment.

Republicans have been pursuing a particular anti-constitutional agenda for some time: turning America into a society in which people are subject to identification and tracking at the whim of the government. In 2005, without any hearings, 96.5% of Republicans in the House and all Republicans in the Senate passed the REAL ID Act into law, allowing the Secretary of Homeland Security to nullify any law in border regions of the United States and requiring Americans to hold national identification cards. In 2008, we learned that anyone forgetting their ID and entering an airport was having their name added to the Terrorist Watch List as some kind of twisted door prize, thanks to the policies of the Bush administration.

And then in 2006, Republican leaders of the Ohio state legislature introduced a bill that would have created an entire state agency dedicated to coordinating police as they arrested people solely for being illegal immigrants. Considering our 4th Amendment constitutional protections against search and seizure of personal papers without probable cause, I wondered at the time how police could possibly go about arresting people just for being illegal immigrants:

How exactly does an officer arrest a person solely for being an illegal immigrant, given that people don’t tend to walk around with signs that say “Illegal Immigrant Here!” or t-shirts that say “I Walked 500 miles, Illegally Crossed the Border, and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt”??? Also peskily missing are the illegal immigrant tattoos on the forehead. What will qualify for suspicion meriting further investigation? Brown skin? Overheard snippets of conversation in Spanish?

I was joking about the special Illegal Immigrant T-Shirts, but Representative Brian Bilbray wasn’t joking when he appeared on cable news just the other day and suggested that yes, you could accurately pick out illegal immigrants and not just because of the brown color of their skin. No, no, not just skin color! It’s also, explained Rep. Bilbray, because they wear Illegal Immigrant Clothes:

Chris Matthews: Like what, like what? Give me a non-ethnic aspect that would tell you to pick up somebody.

Brian Bilbray: They will look at the kind of dress you wear, there’s different type of attire, there’s different type of, right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes.

My point in bringing all this up is that these aren’t isolated policies. We’ve got ourselves a trend when it comes to this Republican Party obsession with using police to track people and demanding people’s identity papers not on the basis of probable cause (too constitutionish) but rather on the basis of some characteristic that’s a synonym for SKIN TONE and rhymes with GLACIAL SNOWPILING. It’s a long-term Republican policy trend.

So when we saw that the Arizona State Legislature passed a bill last week requiring police officers to stop people on the basis of rhymes-with-GLACIAL-SNOWPILING, demand their papers, and detain them if they don’t have papers, should we have been surprised? No. Should we be surprised when we find out that every single Arizona State Senator and Representative who voted for this bill (SB 1070) is a Republican? No. Should we be surprised to find out that only 1 out of the approximately 100 Republican Arizona state legislators voted against the measure? No. Should we be surprised when we find out that the current Republican Governor of Arizona, channeling Evan Mecham and J. Fife Symington III, signed the bill into law? No.

No, we shouldn’t be surprised, because time and again we have seen that this is what Republican politicians do. We shouldn’t be surprised by these events, but we should note them and remember them. We should also remember what these practices were called back during the Cold War when our teachers told us about the evil countries that practiced them. “Papiere, Bitte!” cried the East German Stasi agents in the spy films we were shown as they chased Good Germans citizens racing for a train to Free Berlin. “Police State” was a phrase my teacher used in civics class fairly often to describe the evil Communist way of life, the way of life that our own great country rejected in the noble cause of Freedom.

Any self-respecting and serious Tea Party member who cries “Constitution” or who holds a sign with a picture of Obama with a “Hitler” mustache or who sports a bumper sticker declaring Nancy Pelosi to be a “Communist” or who explains to the nice journalist with the mike that we have to protect our “Freedoms” against the power of “Big Government” should be speaking out right about now against SB 1070 and should have nothing to do with the Republican politicians who voted for it.

Watch Tea Party members over the next few days to see if they live up to that “self-respecting and serious” part. And while you’re at it, watch yourself too. The next time you consider voting for a Republican, remember that THIS is their agenda for America.

The passage last week of SB 1070 has led to the legalization of the nation’s most draconian racial profiling scheme yet. This bill, now signed into law in my former home state of Arizona, would make it a crime to be an illegal immigrant anywhere in the state of Arizona. The Arizona State Legislature has declared that a person anywhere in Arizona without immigration papers, on land that is either public or private, is now “trespassing.” Every state, county and town official interacting with any person in Arizona must if possible determine whether the person is an illegal alien and must transmit that information on to the feds. Police officers in Arizona are required to detain any person they come upon and suspect may be an illegal alien. This new law makes it a crime to not have documentation papers on your person. And if any Arizonan (hello, Minutemen) decides any police officer or police department or fire department or welfare department or public health department or sanitation department or dog catching department isn’t sniffing out and detaining suspected illegal immigrants stringently enough, she or he can file a lawsuit against that officer or department.

The effects of this bill are broad and immediate. If you are an illegal immigrant and your house is on fire, you can’t call the fire department because the fire department will be required under law to check you and report you to the feds. If an illegal immigrant and you’re raped, you’d better not call the cops, because you’ll be checked and jailed and deported. If you’re an illegal immigrant and your employer is poisoning you in his factory or having you beaten, you’d better not go to a county hospital for treatment, because you’ll be checked and reported and deported. Want to create an underground economy in Arizona in which people are ground down and exploited even more than they are now? Congratulations: SB 1070 does it.

Who is going to be targeted under this law? Who are the “suspected illegal immigrants”? FOX News analysts have it figured out, and they don’t have a problem with it:

“I don’t think there’s really anything wrong as far as racial profiling, stopping people who are coming in illegally. I mean, you’re not looking for a blond haired, blue eyed Swede most of the time.” …

“A lot of the critics are saying this is racial profiling. Duh! They’re coming from another country. That’s what you do. You have to look at them and see who they are before you know they’re legal or illegal. I don’t think that’s a fair criticism.” …

“It’s racial profiling, to be sure, cops know if there’s a van full of dark-skinned men with lawnmowers packed into the back of a pick-up truck…that’s what they’re talking about.”

Someone who has not lived in Arizona, or who has only shuttled back and forth between to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport and a gated golf course, may not be aware that Arizona is filled with “dark-skinned men.” Many of them have lawnmowers. Some of them travel in vans and pick-up trucks. Millions of “dark-skinned men” and dark-skinned women living in Arizona are American citizens, and many more are legal residents. Police officers (and firefighters and health workers and dogcatchers) are now legally required to check for immigration documents if they have a suspicion dark-skinned Arizonans could be illegal immigrants. And if those dark-skinned Arizonans don’t have any proof of their citizenship on their bodies, it doesn’t matter whether they’re American citizens or not. It’ll be off to detention with them. And if the police departments (and fire departments and health departments and dog catchers) don’t do it, the Minutemen now have standing to take them to court and force them to do it.

Americans from Arizona to California to Florida to Minnesota to Illinois to Connecticut and beyond are protesting this law that creates a police state and threatens the liberties and security of people in Arizona, citizens and noncitizens alike. Americans everywhere are getting upset about this because our liberties are guaranteed by the United States Constitution, and when their applicability is eroded anywhere, they are threatened everywhere else.

The LegalizeAZ website is a center for information updates as protests spread further. At 5 pm this afternoon in Minneapolis Minnesota, for example, people are gathering at the The Hilton Hotel on 1001 Marquette Ave South to voice their outrage at SB 1070, taking advantage of media following Republican Presidential possibility Mike Huckabee as he travels to give a speech. At 7 pm tonight, people are gathering outside a detention facility at 1930 Beach St, Broadview, Illinois for a protest vigil in solidarity with the people of Arizona. Keep checking back at with the LegalizeAZ website or at the Legalize AZ twitter feed.

Update: Also see this list of dozens and dozens of protest marches across the USA planned for May 1, 2010.